The design competition started on January 15, 2010 and was open for team or individual participation. The challenge is was to design a sustainable, flexible and locally embedded one family house for a specific location in Ghana. The modular construction has to be suitable for local implementation and affordable for its future owners. The winning design(s) will be built in Ghana.

Results
The competition official closed on May 17, 2010. More than 3100 architects participated. Over 250 teams from 45 countries submitted their collaborative design. After an intense jury procedure 10 designs where nominated. The jury report articulates the considerations of the jury. To view the winner and the 10 nominated designs click here.

Open source sharing
All designs of the first OS-House competition are made available on the Open Source House platform. If you haven’t signed up to the platform please fill out the form on the right of this page.

Once logged in fill out your profile and share your ideas or improve the designs of others. Contact and co-creation with local parties is promoted and facilitated by the platform. To extend your personal (international) network, for personal PR and to team-up, one can add one’s portfolio, website and expertise to their profile.

All designs are available for adaption to local context and implementation. According to the terms of use, a design that has been improved has to be uploaded again so others might use it.

This platform is temporary. Open Source House is currently working on a more sophisticated and custom made platform. If you have any suggestions/brilliant ideas/frustrations with other platforms/etc. please send them to <info@os-house.org>

Pilot
The winning design will be build in Ghana as a pilot. The aim of this pilot is to test cultural perception, technical feasibility and economical viability. Cape Coast Municipality has provided Open Source House with a plot to build the pilot. Together with a local contractor and Stichting Bouwen the pilot will be realized.
Follow the news on this website or on Facebook to keep up to date with the building process.

Business plan
The results of the pilot form the base of the business plan to start implementing the Open Source Houses on a larger scale in Ghana. The aim of this social venture is to provide affordable and sustainable housing to the people of the lower middle-income bracket in Ghana. A local entrepreneur in co-creation with Enviu develops the business plan and will be responsible for local implementation.

This is just the beginning
After this first competition and pilot project OS-House will continue to promote the implementation of more OS-Houses, challenge platform members to improve available designs, organize new competitions and stimulate local parties to take designs and adapt them to their local conditions. Our goal is to realize a 100.000+ OS-Houses before the year 2020.